


After Glow

by The_Custodian



Series: After Glow [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29135952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Custodian/pseuds/The_Custodian
Summary: A post apocalyptic tale of a persons exploration through wasteland and mystery. The world ended, but not really because life goes on and so will you.
Series: After Glow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138184





	After Glow

**Author's Note:**

> This is just the rough draft that I'll clean up and compile into a larger work at a later date.  
> Thank you to Nicole and Zoë. Without your support and inspiration this project wouldn't be undertaken. I love you.

The raven was dead. It lay there on the parched soil surrounded by dead and dying grass. Almost as if its crash from the sky had sent sympathetic shock waves out from its landing and gravesite. Nothing had touched it either, no industrious ants come to claim this bounty. None of the various scavengers of the wood had slunk out of the protective shroud of trees to snap up the easy meal. Just one dead bird, feet curled like angry fists thrust out at the uncaring sky. Like Fate the vast blue cared not for those under its mantle. It was a bad omen. Even nature wanted nothing to do with this creature.  
Corbie sat hunkered on their haunches staring idly at the desiccated husk before them and pondered over what to do as one does when confronted with the prospect of an untouched bird carcass. You poke it with a stick of course. Unsurprisingly accosting the bird with a stick did nothing to alleviate it from its current state of being stone dead. The youth wrinkled their nose as other thoughts began to crowd in on the heels of stick poking. What killed it? It didn't look like any of its feathers had been disturbed. Well, that was before they had ruffled its feathers. No broken bones. No blood, dried or otherwise. Just a faint and unpleasant smell of black licorice that for some reason set the hair on their hackles to raising.  
The raven was dead. That was a problem, one that they weren't particularly equipped to wrestle with at the moment. Not enough context to really get to the root of the problem. Old age, sickness, heart could of given out, a plethora of reasons. But it lay in the midst of an otherwise healthy meadow, a ring of death slowly radiating out from it. Or it could just be coincidence and Corbie was overreacting. Which was entirely possible. The Storyteller in town liked to remind them that they definitely spent far too much time thinking about things other than what they were supposed to. Not their fault that the Storyteller had a voice like dry rot and the cadence of sludge infiltrating your boots. Some of the lessons were even interesting.  
Shaking their head, Corbie stood from their inspection of the strange tableau before them. Whatever this meant, if it meant anything, would be better figured out away from it and indoors preferably. Craning their neck they shaded their face and squinted through slatted fingers at the sun, a baleful ball of dead white light that seemed to shiver and convulse as they looked at it. One second it looked to be a few finger spans above the tree line then suddenly jerk in a random direction and snap back just as swiftly. The other two suns seemed to lag and lurk beyond the first, dim and barely there, like the light they shed. Only easily viewed when the dominant sank below the horizon. If they were lucky, they could make it back home before full dark settled in and smothered the world in darkness.  
Distant sounds of laughter, sharp and manic, wended its way through the trees and slapped Corbie about the head. A sound not unlike chewing chalk. Fortunately the sound carried quite away and if they were any judge of distance too far away to be anything more than vaguely alarming. Still, best not to linger. They had places to be and those places were not torn asunder and dwelling in the digestive sacks of amber eyes. Not today at least.  
Back turned to the inconsistent sun and laughter still periodically emerging from the trees, they set off. Long strides soon take them out of the clearing and into the comforting presence of various trees. Most of which whose boughs were rustling with conversation. Oak listening patiently as Elm rattled on about a tribe of squirrels that had recently stripped a whole half of her crown of leaves to make garments from. Corbie wasn't sure if they heard pride or consternation in the susurration of leaves and clatter of limbs. Maybe both? A nearby crab apple tree disgorged a contingent of its chitinous fruit to search out and retrieve some fresh fertilizer to stimulate a new round of growth and expansion. They steered well clear of that chittering mob of insanity.  
Quickening their stride, Corbie put some extra effort into getting clear of the wood before night fell. Under normal circumstances they would feel comfortable enough seeking shelter in one of the nearby safe houses securely mounted in the sturdy limbs of one of the petrified trees. But not with the amber eyes prowling around. Loathsome creatures more machine than flesh, they were not an often encountered threat along the Stranger Coast. But still sometimes they came crawling out of the industrial desecration of the Sunderlands to the west. Corbie had never seen one, not personally. Though they'd heard stories of the outcome of when one encountered sentient life. The results were never pretty and hardly left enough trace to fill a small sack, let alone for the burial shroud.  
They reasoned that if the sun was on their side they'd clear the trees well before the shadows grew long on the face of the earth. If they were really lucky they'd be able to get onto the homestead's grounds before the pyrefly lanterns began to stir. The hives needed to be checked before full dark and a whole other list of small chores and tasks. Head cluttering full of work to come, the retreat from the woods was done and over before they knew it. One moment they were surrounded by trees and the background chatter of wildlife, the next saw toothed grasses and thorny scrags of brush as far as they eye could see. Well, as far as the ocean at least, it's leaden waters marching away from the coast as the waves recoiled from the land and pulled themselves up and away from its offending touch. In that self same distance they could spy the welcoming orange glow of many lanterns being lit and candles being placed on sills. Even from this distance, the scent of salt penetrated their nose. The sharp smell brought them back to ground.  
They were woolgathering at the edge of the wood. Light was fast fading and the shadows were much longer than they would have liked them to be. Some even writhed suggestively and curled a seductive come hither with promises for more. Corbie scowled in the general direction of the shadows playing at being slinky and alluring, but as shadows are, it was merely just a shadow. It lacked substance and the attempt was left hollow and easily ignored. It amused them though that they still tried, but they couldn't blame them. They'd want for a warm touch too if they couldn't have it anymore.  
In the distance they could hear a deep bass throoming as the Woodwyrd called in the flock of kevmere goats he tended to. Old Mossfoot had been around since as long as people could remember. Well as long as people had been settled in Dnalsieht or there abouts anyway. He said he was a tree who watched the people move in after one of the Long Nights and had yearned to be able to move and dance like those who now tended to the no longer abandoned ruin. So he simply uprooted his feet and walked down out of the wood one day and taken up the job of shepherd from that point forward. The Storyteller had a different idea of how Mossfoot came to be, but he was not saying on what that story was. He said it was rude to contradict a person their origins and if they wanted to live life anew from what was in the past that was fine by him. Corbie thought the whole debate a moot point anyways, you are who you say you are and your actions back that fact up.  
Standing tall over the bleating mass of tail waggling goats, Mossfoot was a silhouette against the backdrop of sunsets murky reds and bruised purples. Time was definitely getting away from Corbie. Their mothers and father would be cross at how long they had dallied. Not that they had dallied per say, just that night was falling and they liked to worry. Also the end of day rituals and chores. That would be the main reason for smirking and head shaking. Shirking your chores again kiddo. The words were said jokingly of course. Always chiding, never disparaging. Again thoughts made quick work of the land and Corbie wondered, as they often did, at what sort of magic that was and how they could harness it and apply it to other measures. Before them the homestead lay, fields of various plants either tucking in for the night or just waking up to drink moonlight. With the gloaming came the telltale sooty streaks of Pyreflies in flight. Sighing deeply Corbie felt their shoulders slump. The nights work was already underway and they were late. Because the raven was dead.


End file.
